


Fathomable Prophecies

by marcelo



Category: Macbeth - Shakespeare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2019-07-18 08:54:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16115048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marcelo/pseuds/marcelo
Summary: Choice can be a blood-soaked thing, slippery and perhaps unreal.





	Fathomable Prophecies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Small_Hobbit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Small_Hobbit/gifts).



"I'm sorry," said the witch seated next to Lady Macbeth in the back seat of the limousine. She hadn't been there half a blink before speaking, and in Lady Macbeth's current frame of mind, the manner of her apparition and her choice of words were enough to confirm her not just as a witch, but, even assuming the country was full of them, one of the witches her husband had met. 

Up until then, she had believed he had been high at the moment for the first time in an otherwise wearisomely prudish life. Not that she had complained — whatever he might have done, she had done much more before meeting and marrying him, and if taking drugs had been what had spurred him to the act of betrayal that had been the only last, necessary step to achieve real power, she would have supplied them years before.

Perhaps then things wouldn't have ended as fucked up as they had.

Lady Macbeth threw at the witch, with remarkably accuracy considering the awkward angle, the glass of Scotch she had been drinking. The glass flew through the witch, bouncing loudly but harmlessly against the bulletproof side window. 

Neither woman moved, spoke, or looked embarrassed. After a dozen steady heartbeats, Lady Macbeth grabbed another glass and began to pour herself her fourth drink.

"The prophecy," said the witch in a tone that should have been weighted with unspoken excuses but somehow lacked even a hint of them, "was accurate."

Lady Macbeth scowled at her now empty glass. "My husband's little coup did work, if that's what you mean. Rather obvious, in hindsight. Duncan never saw it coming; he walked out of Downing Street looking like somebody had just fucked him up the ass with something very sharp. Balls and titles, the both of them, I'll give them that, but not a lot of brains. I don't think my husband ever dreamed of becoming Prime Minister before he met you three and you told him how to do it." She carefully put down the glass on the tray next to her. "And now Duncan's fucking lackeys are spending their political afterlives haunting us from every TV program, paper, and, my God, _podcast_ in Britain. How the fuck does Banquo even know what a podcast is? The man talked with his mistress from a landline phone, for God's sake."

"The prophecy was..."

Lady Macbeth raised a hand, not looking at the witch but at the dark, soundproofed, glass partition standing between them and the driver and, past him, the road ahead. She wondered for an idle second if the witch could see through it as well. "Yes. Accurate. Of course it was. I was born in Vegas, not Glamis, you know. I know how cons work. If it hadn't been accurate you wouldn't have hooked him, and he'd still be more or less happy." She didn't sigh. "We'd still be more or less happy. We were, fuck you. We wanted kids, but.. we were happier than we're now, at least. I feel like I'm sleepwalking through a nightmare, and I don't know if I feel guilty about betraying Duncan or just regret how it turned out." It occurred to Lady Macbeth that although the honesty of her words was not to be explained by the Scotch — magic was, God help her, a more likely explanation than the comparatively few drinks she had taken — perhaps the Scotch explained her lack of concern about it.

The witch opened her hands in another non-apology. "Prophecies are free, it's accuracy what costs. We don't set the price, nor choose the currency or payment terms, but if it weren't expensive it wouldn't work. Time doesn't haggle."

Lady Macbeth chuckled bitterly. "Birnam Wood... Let me guess: the Greens will be my husband's political downfall. That's the joke."

"We prefer to think of it as tragedy, but, yes, that is what will happen — as we told your husband."

"That's not a tragedy, that's a fucking farce. God knows he's not a political genius, but those dumbasses have less of a killer instinct than a potted fern. It'd be more likely for the actual trees to walk from Scotland to London and march my husband out of office."

"That is true, and yet their weakness will be their strength. They will have a leader not from their own, somebody who will tell them how to achieve power at the price of their conscience. They will say to themselves that they are conning their leader, they will pretend to take the deal, and then they will pay in full." The witch's voice had shifted somehow. Lady Macbeth recognized it from a thousand parties: it was business now. Finally. Nobody appeared in somebody else's back seat just to say they were sorry. 

"Is that a prophecy?"

"Yes."

"And you're telling me this because..." It was less a question than a polite opening. Less a matter of manners than of rhythm. Rhythm... and extra seconds to think.

"It will be you." Lady Macbeth thought that, even if the glass hadn't flown through the witch, even if her prophecies could be ascribed to the natural black arts of political analysis, the witch did have a power that she had seen faked a thousand times, but not demonstrated until now: she spoke in a way that could not be disbelieved. There was Power in that, and Lady Macbeth felt, for the first time, fear. What prices, shadows, and rules did the witch represent, exploited, or served, that made her have that kind of power and not use it for her own benefit?

"You're saying that if I betray my husband I'll become, what? Influential?"

"After you betray your husband you will become Prime Minister." It wasn't a promise. The witch was describing a past that just hadn't happened yet.

Lady Macbeth's voice matched the witch's, as close to prophecy as a mortal could rise or fall. "And it will end badly for me. Eventually."

"Yes. Eventually."

"I love my husband. He has his flaws, but I love him. I truly do." 

The witch said nothing. It wasn't disbelief, for the back of the limo had become a place graced and damned to truth. It was simply that it wouldn't matter.

When Lady Macbeth turned to look at the witch she was alone again.

Her cellphone was in her hand, she knew not since when. It neither looked nor felt like a dagger, and that was a lie.

.finis.


End file.
